The Indian Foreign Minister, S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi recently during a bilateral meeting at Vientiane, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers conference being held there. As per political news today, the Chinese foreign minister made the customary rhetorical statement about the need for India and China to cooperate and collaborate more in further building up their trade and bilateral relationship.
At the bilateral meeting, Wang Yi is said to have put across the point that certain parts of the Depsang and Demchok areas that Chinese People’s Liberation Army [PLA] occupied illegally be accepted by India as Chinese territory and as the new normal.
Going by recent political news, Indian foreign minister, Jaishankar rejected this proposal out of hand and asserted that the Line of Actual Control [LAC] should stand where it stood in 1993.
It should be noted that India and China had signed an agreement in 1993 where it was agreed that both the countries will take responsibility of maintaining peace and tranquillity along the LAC and not transgress in each other’s territory.
It is now common knowledge not just in India that any agreement signed with China is not even worth the value of the paper on which it is signed because China will find ways to violate and abuse the agreement.
Also Read: Today political news headlines | live political news | national political
China has continuously transgressed the LAC since 1993
Ever since China signed this LAC agreement with India in 1993, it has steadily and systematically violated the terms of the LAC agreement by transgressing into and occupying Indian territory.
This had gone on almost unhindered till 2014 when the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] came to power with an absolute majority according to political news today.
In 2014 itself, clashes between Indian and Chinese forces began taking place at different points along the LAC and this was a clear indication that Indian forces on the LAC were confronting the Chinese intruders much more confidently.
Prior to that, Indian troops felt discouraged from escalating faceoffs resulting from Chinese transgressions into serious confrontations as they were not sure about support from their own government.
Also Read: https://newswatchindia.com/hindi-news/
In that situation, it is anybody’s guess how much Indian territory the Chinese PLA would have grabbed since patrolling by Indian troops was much less than what it is now. Needless to say, that they had occupied a lot more Indian land prior to 2014 than is being reported.
China has found it difficult to deal with India since 2014
It is not just on the LAC but overall, in the entire extent of relationship between the two countries, China has been literally stonewalled from making transgressions into India as per recent political news.
The Chinese political leaders including President Xi Jinping has realized now that if China does not make the necessary changes to how it approaches India, the relationship would go further into the deep freezer.
Interestingly, China is India’s largest trading partner with a trade volume of $118 billion, which is just a fraction of what it can be if the two countries achieve just half of the trade potential between them.
Currently, the trade surplus is overwhelmingly in China’s favour as India imports well over $100 billion worth of Chinese goods and exports just around $17 billion worth of goods to China.
Also Read: https://newswatchindia.com/latest-news-world-from-china/
So, the stakes for China are quite serious in this trade relationship and if it is foolish enough to take that for granted and continue with its dubious policies towards India, it would have more to lose than India in the bargain.
The dice is in China’s hand and it must play it right
If China is calculating the possibilities of the opposition coming to power in India wherein it will be able to get its way in its relations with this country, then it can wait till ‘Kingdom come…’
With the BJP in charge in India and with the prospect of a BJP leadership in the hands of younger leaders with a more hardline approach to national security, China’s current approach towards its relationship with India will stagnate.
Chinese meddling in Indian election process has a red line beyond which it can do nothing. The next generation of BJP leaders are not going to be as patient as Narendra Modi and if China does not know how to deal with them, even the trade relationship could be affected.
China would do well to realize that even PM Modi has drawn the red line beyond which he won’t allow China to intrude into India’s domain be it on land or sea or more access to the Indian market.
Also Read: https://newswatchindia.com/latest-news-world-what-message-does-modis-first-state-visit-in-his-third-term-to-russia-gives-to-the-west/
Hence, it is for China to decide the kind of relationship it wants to develop with India. From what is visible now, it seems the Chinese feel that they have time in their hands to wait for PM Modi’s tenure to get over and the Congress under Rahul Gandhi to come to power. That is a silver bullet that might well be elusive or it could misfire by a long way. A future BJP government will be more inclined to play the Tibet card with more purpose, a situation that China has not encountered yet. In fact, China has had it really easy in Tibet so far and that was all because India refused to play the Tibet card. This could change in the near future.
AUTHOR: Dev Kumar is an independent geo-political observer, commentator and blogger who tries to look at international issues in relation to India and present a different dimension that has hardly been covered by mainstream experts.
